Positive Thinking

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Positive Thinking: What’s the best job to do good?

What’s the best job to do good?

BBC Radio 4 - Positive Thinking, What’s the best job to do good?

Sangita Myska meets Ben Todd the founder of an ethical careers service.

Sangita Myska meets Ben Todd, the founder of an ethical careers service, and asks if this is the most effective way to have a positive impact on the world’s problems.

Sangita Myska meets Ben Todd, founder of the ethical careers service 80,000 Hours, who helps people find jobs that are effective in addressing global issues.

By and large, conversations about how we choose to do what we do often focus around our passions, earnings and striking a work-life balance. But, are they the right considerations?

If we want to make a positive difference in the world, Ben Todd believes we should consider the estimated 80,000 hours of our lives we spend working. His service identifies neglected areas of global problems, creates individual career plans for recent graduates, who they call ‘readers’, and finds them job opportunities as well as setting them up with mentors.  

So, given global disparities in health and wealth as well as the existential threats facing humanity - such as another pandemic or climate change - should there be an ethical imperative that governs how we choose to spend our working lives?


Contributors include:

Sanjay Joshi, who gave up a job in the City to set up the non-profit charity-rating organisation SoGive.
 
Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School, and author of Growing the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit.
 
Sarah Ellis, co-founder of AmazingIf careers agency, and co-author of The Squiggly Career.
 

Producer: Dom Byrne
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

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Big ideas that might solve some of the biggest problems facing Britain today.

Positive Thinking takes a deep dive into some of the biggest problems facing Britain today - and meets the people whose big ideas might solve them.

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